Tag: Hawaii
Burger joint shutters after video shows workers grilling rat
A restaurant in Hawaii was forced to close temporarily when a stomach-turning video of a rodent sizzling on its grill popped up on social media, according to reports.
“We are horrified a former employee would create something like this trying to destroy our reputation without regard for our 20-plus years of quality and aloha,” Teddy’s Bigger Burgers President Richard Stula told Hawaii News Now.
The video, which surfaced on Snapchat, appears to show two teenage workers joking as they fry up the baby rat next to a beef patty at the restaurant in Honolulu.
“Braaaaah. Gnarly. Employees at Teddy’s Bigger Burger cooking a rat at the 99 ranch location. Ummmmm … so gnar,” reads the caption, according to a screengrab posted by Fox News.
The restaurant fired at least one employee — and plans to conduct a “complete sanitization” of equipment and replace utensils, company reps told the station.
“We will then send a corporate team in to inspect and complete a thorough audit of the location before it is allowed to re-open,” Stula told Fox.
He added, “We are horrified that a former teenage employee would conduct themselves in that way and make such a video of which we are investigating its authenticity.”
The state’s Department of Health was scheduled to inspect the restaurant Friday.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/11/23/burger-joint-shutters-after-video-shows-workers-grilling-rat/
Woman accused of killing twin, pretended to be her to date her boyfriend
The Albany yogi accused of murdering her identical twin sister by driving off a cliff in Hawaii, dressed up as her dead sibling shortly after the crash and tried to hit on her boyfriend, the bereaved beau testified Tuesday.
The disturbing anecdote from the late Anastasia Duval’s boyfriend Federico Bailey came on the second day of sister Alexandria Duval’s murder trial.
“She began cuddling up on me, it seemed like she was flirting with me … she sat down beside me really close and lay her head on my shoulder,” Bailey told the courtroom in Maui, where Alexandria, 39, drove a white SUV off the road in May 2016 — a crash that killed her twin sister while she walked away relatively unscathed.
“She put on Anastasia’s clothes. I started talking to her about what happened, she avoided answering any of my questions.
“When I saw her in Anastasia’s dress it was disturbing. Anastasia had just worn that dress a few nights earlier,” added Bailey, who had lived with the two sisters and Alexandria’s boyfriend.
The three of them were on a camping trip at the time of the crash, and the siblings were fighting because Alexandria had shown up uninvited to their vacation, Bailey said.
He said the squabbling sisters drove away while he was in the bathroom — and he never saw Anastasia again.
Witnesses on Tuesday also recounted seeing the women fighting in their car after that — including one who heard Alexandria screaming “I need a psychiatrist!” just hours before the plunge.
“The girl that was on the passenger side … she was yelling and yelling and yelling. And that’s when the girl who was driving the car said, ‘call the psychiatrist, I need a psychiatrist,’” said Cecelia Kupau.
Other witnesses testified Monday that they saw the two in a hair-pulling fistfight right before the SUV careened off the cliff.
“Hair-pulling and punching is what I saw … The SUV sped up and then it jerked to the left,” said 17-year-old Joseph Toleafoa, who was in a van behind the Duvals’ car, according to Maui News.
Alexandria has already dodged a murder rap for her sister’s death, when a judge found no probable cause, but was arrested again after a grand jury indictment.
The siblings were born Alison and Ann Dadow in upstate New York, but moved several times around the country opening — and closing — yoga studios, racking up arrests for DUIs and, ultimately, changing their names.
At the time of the crash, they were living in Maui with their boyfriends.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/woman-accused-of-killing-twin-pretended-to-be-her-boyfriend/
MAN HID MOTHER’S BODY PARTS IN REFRIGERATOR, COURT DOCUMENTS SAY
A Hawaii man accused of killing his mother months ago stuffed her dismembered body parts in seven plastic bags in the kitchen freezer of the Waikiki apartment they shared, according to court documents made public Monday.
Yu Wei Gong has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Liu Yun Gong.
He called 911 on April 11 and said: “‘I killed my Mom,'” according to a detective’s affidavit supporting an arrest warrant. When officers arrived and could not find the woman, Gong told them she was “in the fridge,” the complaint said.
An officer found what appeared to be body parts.
“Another covered object in the freezer felt to a different officer like a human leg and foot,” the complaint said.
Yu Wei Gong didn’t speak or enter a plea during a brief court appearance Monday. Deputy Public Defender Diamond Grace requested a Mandarin interpreter for his preliminary hearing, scheduled for Wednesday. He remained in custody with bail set at $2 million.
Grace didn’t immediately return a phone message seeking comment after the hearing.
Authorities say Yu Wei Gong told officers that he accidentally killed his mother in September after she became angry when the 26-year-old said he wanted to work instead of going to school.
Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Rachel Lange determined Liu Yun Gong had suffered blunt force injuries to the head, the complaint said. Her identity was confirmed by comparing fingerprints to those on file under her Hawaii driver’s license.
The manager of the apartment building where they lived told police he had not seen the man’s mother since before Christmas, the complaint said.
It said Liu Yun Gong did not show up for work on Aug. 21, 2016. When a supervisor called her phone, it went unanswered. Yu Wei Gong called the supervisor the next day, saying his mother was on another Hawaiian island and had left her phone at home.
Three women watched the hearing and said outside court they wanted to support Gong spiritually because he had attended their church.
Gong and his mother, who they knew by different names, attended Waipahu United Church of Christ, said former pastor Norma Desaegher.
“He has nobody. No family as far as we can tell,” she said, adding that it’s been several years since she last saw him. “We wanted to give him that spiritual support.”
Gong moved to Hawaii from China when he was 19, after his mother married an active church parishioner she met online, the women said. Mother and son stopped going to church after the man died in 2014.
The women said Gong took English classes at the church and moved with his mother and step-father to Waikiki so she could pursue a massage business.
“We just wanted people to know they were a good family” Desaegher said.